Traditional transportation modes via water, land, rail, and air revolutionized the movement and growth of our current culture. Adverse environmental, societal, and economic impacts of these traditional transportation modes, however, initiated a movement to find alternative transportation modes that take advantage of the significant improvements in transportation technology, and that efficiently move people and materials between locations. High-speed transportation systems utilizing rails or other structural guidance components have been contemplated as a solution to existing transportation challenges while improving safety, decreasing the environmental impact of traditional transportation modes and reducing the overall time commuting between major metropolitan communities.
A high-speed, high-efficiency transportation system utilizes a low-pressure environment in order to reduce drag on a vehicle at high operating speeds, thus providing the dual benefit of allowing greater speed potential and lowering the energy costs associated with overcoming drag forces. In embodiments, these systems may use a near-vacuum (e.g., low-pressure) environment within a tubular structure.
The tubular structure will be subjected to various environmental, weather, and/or seismic conditions, such as, high winds, thermal variations, and earthquakes that may impart forces on the tubular structure and may rupture portions of the tubular structure. If the tubular structure cannot maintain a low-pressure (e.g., near vacuum) environment due to such ruptures however, the drag on a vehicle traversing the tubular structure would increase dramatically. To counter the increase in the drag force acting on the vehicle resulting from the loss of the low-pressure state, the transportation system may increase the thrust acting on the vehicle to maintain the vehicle at the high operating speed; however, the energy load required to increase the thrust acting on the vehicle is inefficient and uneconomical. Accordingly, there exists a need for improved systems and methods for the automatic detection and rapid sealing of leaks in a tubular transportation system that may slow or eliminate pressure loss and for maintaining the low-pressure environment in the tubular transportation system.